“Woman, why are you weeping?”
Mary Magdalene was acting in the image of the original Eve , the first woman, weeping because of all that had been lost and was now apparently irretrievable. Eve no doubt also wept at the consequences of death which her own choices helped usher into the world. We could imagine that she wept not only for her lost son Abel but for her own complicity in the darkness that ultimately took him from him. It was normal, natural, and human to weep in the face of such a sorrowful and apparently hopeless situation.
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
Mary Magdalene deeply loved Jesus, with a love that did not end because of his traumatic death. The only way she knew to express this affection was now by showing tenderness to his corpse. Nevertheless she insisted on her right to that body, her right to continue to lavish upon it such love as she could. She did not yet have a faith that could cause her to hope for more. And so it was only natural that she not immediately recognize Jesus, who himself no doubt did not wish to be recognized immediately.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener
Wouldn't it have been preferable for Jesus to make himself known to this brokenhearted women at once, and to immediately assuage her sorrow which was always meant, as he himself had said, to turn to joy (see John 16:20). We can only speculate about why Jesus may have revealed himself in this way. Why did ask her a question to which he himself was, as he knew, the answer? Why draw her one final time to this final point of her way of understanding the events of the passion? Was it perhaps so that she could well and truly come to understand the full difference between the world prior to the resurrection and the world after? She thought Jesus was the gardener, just one more man walking the footsteps of the first gardener, Adam. She thought this was still the old creation were everything must finally end in death, even those things that seemed most true and beautiful, even the life of her beloved Lord. No doubt, like the first women, she wept too for her own sin and complicity that made her unable to do more. But she was to discover that this was no longer the old creation. And she would no longer be defined by Eve's archetype.
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,”
which means Teacher.
Jesus called her by name as he does all of the sheep who belong to him (see John 10:3). She was not merely another of the faceless masses defined by sin, loss, and despair. Her identity had been excavated from the darkness of sin. To Jesus she was a unique, beautiful, and beloved individual. He knew her better than she knew herself, knew the truth and beauty in her story better than she herself could recognize it without his help. She had inevitable imbibed a self-definition as fallen among the fallen. But Jesus revealed her to be one whom he knew and loved, even when she did not know him. We too are sheep that belong to Jesus, sheep whom he calls by name. We have invested our identities in many lesser things, in a world fallen and doomed to death. But he continues to come to us a call us by name, restoring us to the royal dignity that he intends for us, to our place with him in the Father's house.
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Many of us have seen the gardener. But how many of us have seen the Lord? If we are still in a place of sorrow and despair let us wait for him and listen for his voice. We are his own and he will call us.
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart,
and they asked Peter and the other Apostles,
“What are we to do, my brothers?”
How do we respond to this overwhelmingly generous initiative of love on the part of Jesus himself? We repent, which means to start thinking and living like creatures of the new creation rather than of the old. We seek forgiveness for when we fail and avail ourselves of all the graces of our baptism, all the fruits and gifts of the Spirit of the Lord in whom all beloved sons and daughters share. This promised Spirit was not only for those about whom we read in Acts, but also even "to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call". This is describing us! So let us open ourselves to all that the blessings the Lord himself delights to pour out.
No comments:
Post a Comment